Tag Archives: Brazil

My partner is Brazilian, and we have a fairly constant stream of friends and relatives from Brazil through our house year-round. It’s a delight, and I especially love the gifts of honey, guava jam, cachaca (Brazilian rum), and other treats that keep my pantry fairly well stocked. My season of MasterChef just finished airing in Brazil, and my “family” down there became rockstars because they could brag that each time they come to the U.S., they get to eat BenStarr food for their entire stay. So I’ve always been utterly baffled by the fact that each and every one of them is absolutely OBSESSED with the Olive Garden.

Each time they arrive here in Dallas, their first meal MUST be at the Olive Garden…even though they know a fabulous home-cooked meal in my kitchen can await them if they desire. No…it simply MUST be the Olive Garden. And they post on Facebook that they’re eating at the Olive Garden and all their Brazilian friends and family go absolutely NUTS with jealousy.

Part of me thinks I understand this obsession. I grew up in Abilene, Texas, and during my high school years (91-95), the Olive Garden was the fanciest and most expensive restaurant in town. It’s the place you go for a special anniversary…or if you’re rich, for your birthday. Coming from a poor family, I could only dream of dining there as a kid.

That chance finally arrived after my high school graduation, when I was treated to dinner at the Olive Garden by a wealthy friend’s parents. At age 17, that was the first and last time I had eaten at the Olive Garden. To be honest, I don’t remember the meal at all, though I’m certain I was impressed, considering the narrowness of my West Texas palate at that age.

Through my travels, I developed a strong affinity for small, family-run restaurants, and though I don’t eat out that often, for the past decade I’ve almost universally chosen to eat at small family-run places, rather than chains. Not because chains have bad food…but simply because I prefer the character you get from smaller restaurants, I find the food to be more exciting and unique, and it makes me feel good that I’m supporting a local family, rather than a corporate conglomerate. (That, and the food is usually cheaper, and I’m always incredibly poor.)

My next run-in with the Olive Garden happened in 2007 when I appeared on Rachael Ray’s “So You Think You Can Cook” (which they now call “Hey, Can You Cook?” after probably being threatened by “So You Think You Can Dance?”) It was the first season of that competition, and 5 finalists were flown to NYC, picked up in a limo, and whisked to Times Square to the Marriott Marquis, which was our home for the duration of the show. (Let me tell you, MasterChef does NOT put its contestants in an equivalent hotel. Ha ha ha… Rachael Ray knows how to treat her contestants!!!)

As we entered Times Square (a place I had been to often…my partner’s mother lives in NYC), one of the 3 female contestants spied the Olive Garden and blurted out, “Oooooooo! The Olive Garden! We should eat there tonight!”

Shellshocked, in my head I retorted, “Are you INSANE? We’re smack dab in the middle of the best city for Italian food outside of Italy! And you want us to go to the OLIVE GARDEN?!? You obviously have no concept of good food if you want to eat at the Olive Garden in New York City.”

It turns out that in the mishmash of my mind, I associated that comment with someone who did not actually say it. Later that night, we were being grilled in interviews by the producers and they asked me who I thought would go home first. At that point I had never watched reality TV, so I didn’t know how ruthless it can be, and I had also not yet seen my fellow competitors cook, so I responded that I couldn’t give them an answer, because I hadn’t seen anyone cook yet. After many minutes of me avoiding the question, they basically told me I’d have to sit in front of the camera until I gave them a name. So I said, “It’s going to be [Gina] (name changed for discretion), because as we pulled into Times Square she said she wanted us to all eat at the Olive Garden, and anyone who’d eat at the Olive Garden rather than a classic New York Italian restaurant knows nothing about food.”

In my tiny little brain, I didn’t realize that was being recorded. On MasterChef, which isn’t filmed before a live studio audience, you never see what your fellow contestants say about you in their interviews until the show airs months later. However, after our first challenge, we were seated in front of Rachael’s live studio audience, and they aired my comments in front of everyone.

“Ben, who do you think is going to be the first to go home?”

“It’s going to be [Gina], because…she…knows nothing about food.”

That was my first bitter lesson about talking freely in reality TV interviews, and how your words can be creatively twisted in the editing room. [Gina] was sitting right next to me, and we had actually become fast friends since the first day, and I had totally forgotten about that interview. The audience gasped at my cold remark. And, moments later, after our challenge footage was aired before the live studio audience, Rachael announced that the first person to be eliminated was, in fact [Gina].

Back in the green room, I was on the floor, clutching my head, bawling my eyes out at how cold and coarse I had been, and how betrayed [Gina] must have felt. (I later learned that it wasn’t even her who said that…it was the person who went on to win the competition.)

So, in a sense, the Olive Garden taught me to be extremely careful about what I say in front of the camera. One of my life’s greatest regrets is saying what I said that night, and seeing the repercussions in the tender and very sweet soul of [Gina]. (We have since made up and she is a very, very special person to me.)

So I’ve always been extra-appalled when my Brazilian friends get so worked up about the Olive Garden. I always politely but firmly refuse to join them, and in my own sort of protest, I usually go down the street to my local Italian family eatery, Parma, and have truly stellar Italian food for several dollars less, and I can bring my own wine.

But tonight, my partner’s cousin Floh absolutely insisted that I join her at the “Garden of the Olives” because she wanted to treat me to dinner for once. So I reluctantly agreed. And I promptly posted on Facebook that I was about to eat at the Olive Garden for the first time in 17 years, and was wondering what to expect.

What I DIDN’T expect was the flood of responses…more than 100 in less than 30 minutes. And it ranged from “Gag me with a spoon” to “I used to work at the Olive Garden, DON’T EAT THERE, the food is just microwaved” to “I can’t believe all these food snobs who say that eating at Oliver Garden is akin to treason” to “God, I love their breadsticks and salad.”

So, bear with me as I give you my own humble opinions of my meal at the Olive Garden.

First, the service. Incredibly attentive and professional. Apparently we were lucky, because many, many comments on Facebook talked about the horrible service there. Our waiter was exceedingly accommodating, let us taste several wines before we chose one we liked, and was prompt and incredibly courteous.

Second, the wine. Straight from the Walmart mega line, of course. I knew every wine on their menu. And our $24 bottle costs $7 at Walmart. But that’s to be expected…the wine markup at most restaurants ranges between 200% and 300%. It just hurts extra bad when you already KNOW you’re buying a cheap mega-brand and paying 3 times the amount for it. (Their wine buyer should find some small vineyard somewhere and buy up their entire line so that they’re serving a more obscure label…though I’m not sure any vintner wants to be known as the exclusive supplier for the Olive Garden.)

Second, the appetizers. A very pedestrian and somewhat bland soup (and it was their special…chicken and potato in a creamy tomato broth, but I ate it all…it wasn’t bad), iceberg lettuce salad with Italian dressing and big fat black olives and tangy pepperoncini peppers (as one Facebook fan mentioned…a guilty pleasure, cheap, but yummy), and their legendary breadstix. I’m honestly not sure why their breadsticks get worshipped as they do. They are so undercooked they have absolutely no crust, and they are brushed with melted margarine and sprinkled with garlic salt. People…THAT’S NOT BREAD. Bread is crispy when you bite into it. ESPECIALLY Italian bread. Crispy-crunchy crust, chewy interior. Olive Garden’s breadsticks are more like a long narrow muffin. There’s nothing bread-like about them.

Third, the main course. I ordered the shrimp mezzaluna…large half-moon raviolis stuffed with 3 cheeses, topped with a generous portion of sauteed shrimp, in a cream sauce. The pasta was very overcooked, but the flavors were there. The sauce was delicious. And…shockingly…the shrimp were PERFECTLY done. This surprised me. Most restaurants overcook their shrimp and turn them into Super Balls, bouncy and tough. Not at the Olive Garden. So whoever was back there in the kitchen microwaving my plate of shrimp, you microwaved it PERFECTLY! Kudos to you.

For those of you who aren’t aware, mega chain restaurants look very little like traditional restaurants back in the kitchen. Because they have to maintain consistency and uniformity across their locations, the majority of their food is produced in a factory and shipped frozen to all their restaurants. At the location is it microwaved, plated, and finished before being delivered to the table. This is why you get the exact same Buffalo Chicken Sandwich at every Chili’s in the world. So there’s very little actual cooking going on back there.

Not only does this ensure uniformity from location to location, it dramatically reduces the cost of the food. So my $13.75 plate of Shrimp Mezzaluna at Olive Garden probably cost them $3 by the time it was produced and shipped to the restaurant where I ate it. I do admit, I was a bit offended by their prices, considering the fact that they unabashedly service glorified fast food.

It’s not my intention to bash the Olive Garden. I ate everything on my plate, it was an acceptable meal, and nothing grossed me out. I am the farthest thing from a food snob…I eat at food trucks and stalls and stands far more often than I eat at restaurants. I’d prefer a $1 gas station taco to a meal at the finest restaurant in Dallas ANY DAY OF THE WEEK.

But there is something about chain restaurants that just rubs me the wrong way. I passed Parma on my way to the Olive Garden, and there were maybe 10 cars in the parking lot. I got to the Olive Garden and there was a 20 minute wait for a table. Does no one dining there realize that less than a mile down the road is a small, intimate, family-run place where the food is light-years better…CHEAPER…and YOU CAN BRING YOUR OWN WINE?!?

My instinct tells me…they just don’t know. That’s the reason. Because no human being would willingly wait 20 minutes to pay more for obviously worse food and have to pay a 3x markup for wine that they could have brought themselves.

So if my evening at Olive Garden has taught me anything, it’s to be INSISTENT upon taking friends and family to local restaurants rather than chains. It’s not that chain restaurants serve BAD food. They wouldn’t be in business if they served bad food. But they don’t serve PROPER food. Food that was raised within a few hundred miles of the kitchen it’s prepared in. Food that saw heat for the first time when the chef took it out of the fridge or freezer. Food that went from whole food to finished product in that very kitchen. And profit that goes to support a family that has devoted its life to producing quality food for their neighbors.

So get your friends together this weekend, get on Yelp and find a local restaurant with great reviews, and go out to support it. You’ll be very glad you did!

I’ve been very fortunate to have traveled broadly in the last 14 years, and I’ve spent quite a few New Year’s Eves abroad.

I’ve spent it in Thailand, where everyone sprays everyone else with water…you have to leave your cell phone and personal electronics at home, because, as a Westerner, you get DRENCHED with buckets of ice cold water…which feels great, because it’s VERY hot and muggy in Thailand around that time.

I’ve spent it in Australia, where it’s the armpit of summer, so everyone goes to the park to watch the fireworks over the Sydney harbor bridge. MASSIVE quantities of beer are consumed. (Australians can DRINK. When I say massive quantities, it doesn’t even compare what what we Americans consider to be “a lot” of beer.) I actually got woken up at 6am on New Year’s Day and drug BACK to the bar for more drinking. My pickled liver was not pleased.

I’ve spent it in Brasil, where everyone diligently peels 12 green grapes in the moments before midnight. At midnight, they pop a grape with each gong of the church bell, then they all run and jump into the ocean. (It’s summer there, too.) If one of the grapes happens to be sour, that’s a portent of a bad month in the coming year. (If the third grape was sour, you’re gonna have a crappy March.)

I’ve spent it on a ship off the coast of Antarctica. And let me tell you…the penguins have the most BIZARRE New Year’s Eve ritual. They go skiing…

Well, they probably don’t do it ONLY on New Year’s Day. But they DO ski, apparently for fun. There was a line of them trudging up a snowy trail to the top of the slope, then one by one they ski down to the bottom. Then up they go again! It’s adorable.

One of our most established New Years’ traditions in the US is culinary. Black Eyed Peas. If you live in New York or Boston or Chicago…there’s about a 50/50 chance you’ve never heard of this tradition. But if you have roots anywhere in the South, chances are you know it. And if you haven’t kept it up…shame on you!

I always ate black eyed peas on New Year’s Day with my family, but had never heard the term “Hoppin’ John” until a decade ago. That’s what it’s officially called in the south. That, or “Hoppy John.” (Of course, the leftovers magically and bizarrely change names on January 2, when they suddenly become “Skippin’ Jane” without you having to do anything to modify them. Two dishes for the price and effort of one!) No one can say for sure where the dish got the name, though it appears in cookbooks as early as the 1850’s. The people of Charleston, South Carolina like to say that it was invented in their town by an African American who was handicapped, so that he “hopped” around town and was known to everyone as “Hoppin’ John.” On New Year’s Day he would boil up a kettle of black eyed peas, rice, and pork, so the dish was named in his honor.

In reality, spicy stewed black eyed peas are an ancient staple in Africa (where the stew is called Maharagwe) and both the black eyed pea AND the recipe crossed the ocean to the New World during the horrific era of slavery, where it became firmly cemented into the cuisine of the American South.

Black eyed peas are actually beans, not peas, but they cook so quickly they’re not like most beans. You don’t have to pre-soak them, and they cook through in less than an hour, unlike pinto or kidney or black beans. They are considered a good luck symbol because, in the old days, they resembled the small coins of the era, so they were thought to symbolize wealth. (Analogizing beans with wealth goes back to ancient Europe.)

Another component of Hoppin’ John is pork. I use smoked pork jowls (cheeks), and would never use anything else, but if you can’t find them, or are totally grossed out by the thought of eating cheek meat (you shouldn’t, it tastes like bacon, only meatier and richer)…use bacon, salt pork, ham…any kind of cured pork will do nicely. Pork is considered to be a good luck meat all over the world, because pigs are a symbol of progress. Why, I’m not sure…perhaps it’s because they spend all day rooting up the soil with their snout and moving forward. Birds, on the other hand, are NEVER eaten on New Year’s Day, because they scratch “backward” while searching for food…and you certainly don’t want to move backwards in the New Year! Likewise, crustaceans that move backward like lobster and crawfish are traditionally avoided.

Hoppin’ John is almost always served with collard greens or some other type of pot green. Greens are…well…green. The color of money. And are thus consumed widely all over the world on New Year’s Day. I just add greens to my Hoppin’ John. If I’m developing a flavorful stock to cook my peas in, why on earth would I not want to incorporate the greens as well?!? You can check out my Hoppin’ John recipe here. I also have a video that describes the recipe:

Whether or not you believe in the links between luck and food, it is this aspect of food and culture that makes food so fascinating to me. Food isn’t just survival for us. It is buried into the core of our beliefs, whether religious, superstitious, romantic… Foods truly symbolize different things to different cultures. And it’s a big world out there. So much to learn!

I wish you, dear friends, family, and fans, all the best in the coming year. May your life be filled with success, happiness, and joy. This is a challenging time for our nation. Our economy hasn’t been this bad since the Great Depression. But I have traveled the width and breadth of the world, and I can tell you this for certain: You don’t have to be wealthy…or even “financially secure” (whatever that means) to be happy. The happiest, most generous people I’ve ever met were penniless Bedouins who wander the deserts of Egypt. I have felt more joy, acceptance, love, and happiness in shacks, crumbling cave homes, and tents amongst poverty stricken people in Asia and Africa and Latin America than I’ve ever felt in gleaming mansions in the US or Europe.

Please never equate money with happiness and success. These are found within, and they don’t need material things to exist…in fact they are often hindered by material things. Treasure your friends, your family, your memories. A favorite song moves your heart in a way that your direct-deposit paycheck never can. Looking at your puppy or kitty strikes a cord that looking at your car or house never will. This year, take stock in the TRUE things of value that you have in your life, and focus on cultivating those. You will feel wealthier than you can imagine!

Greetings from Brasil! (Yes, you’re accustomed to Brasil being spelled with a “z” which is common in the U.S. Each time you see it spelled here, though, it’s with an “s” so I’ve always used it that way.)

Christian and I arrived here yesterday. We’re down here for his cousin Pi’s wedding. Right after landing in Sao Paolo, we got on a bus to the coastal city of Santos, where Christian’s Mom, Vitoria, has an apartment a few blocks from the beach.

The 40-mile drive from Sao Paolo, which sits around 2600 feet above sea level, down to Santos is spectacular. The Serra do Mar mountains drop precipitously right at the coast. Because Santos is the largest and busiest port in South America, the highway, known as the Rodovia dos Imigrates, is one of the busiest on the continent, with more than 1 millions cars traversing it each summer weekend. (When traffic gets bad, they switch BOTH the uphill and downhill sections to flow unidirectionally and they divert the opposite flow of traffic onto an older road.) Across the final 2400-foot drop to the sea, there are 53 bridges and 11 tunnels, and sometimes it’s as wide as 6 lanes to support the cargo traffic coming up from the port to South America’s largest city. So you can imagine riding a bus through the hairpin twists and turns and tunnels of such a massive highway, being passed by huge trucks and trailers, was quite an adventure. Luckily, the scenery around was so spectacular with waterfalls and cliffs that I was able to keep myself from worrying about the road.

Santos is a huge city, over 1.5 million people, though most of us in the U.S. have never heard of it. The beach, for miles, is lined with high-rise apartments and hotels, which give way to the massive port where cruise ships and cargo liners are constantly coming in and out. Santos is historic (founded in 1546) and the port is where the majority of the world’s coffee is exported.

Between Sao Paolo and Santos runs a narrow strip of the Atlantic Forest, again something few of us have ever heard about. The Atlantic Forest is recognized as one of the top 5 biodiversity hot-spots in the world. It’s an unusual combination of rainforest and dry forest, broadleaf and needleleaf, tropical and temperate, that runs almost the entire length of the Brasilian coast for thousands of miles from the northern part of Brasil all the way into Argentina. It’s unique in the world in that the tropical rainforest portion extends BELOW the Tropic of Capricorn into the temperate zone, which brings wildlife that normally live in the tropics, like monkeys, into contact with wildlife and weather that exist in temperate regions. (Think monkeys in Nebraska.) And because the area goes from the tropical coast to alpine mountaintops in such a short span, during ice ages the tropical creatures were isolated to the mountaintops when glaciers filled the valleys. So the Atlantic Forest is filled with VERY bizarrely-evolved creatures and plants.

When we arrived in Santos, we strolled along the beach, and then went to the market to stock up on all of Christian’s favorite childhood foods to bring back to the U.S. We also stocked up on cachaca (pronounced “ka-SHA-suh”), which is Brasil’s trademark liquor. Produced from fermented sugar cane juice, like rum but much stronger, it is used to produce their trademark drink, the caipirinha (pronounced “kai-pu-DEEN-ya”), which is made by crushing limes with sugar and pouring cachaca on top. Because the water in Santos can have high levels of bacteria (no different from the beaches in Southern California), it is strongly recommended to have one or two caipirinhas after a swim. Luckily, beach vendors will whip them up for you for a few dollars and deliver them to your beach chair.

For dinner we went to a Lebanese restaurant. There’s a huge Lebanese population in Brasil, probably the largest outside Lebanon, so Lebanese food is plentiful and superb. This particular restaurant was famous for their yogurt, so we ordered a large plate of it.

It was as thick as cream cheese, tart and tangy, with the richest flavor and consistency I’ve ever tasted. We sprinkled over it a bright green olive oil that was pungent and olive-y, and ate it on whole wheat pitas. Unreal. Maybe the most delicious single thing I’ve ever tasted.

We slept 11 hours last night, exhausted from two short nights in the days before our trip.

Vitoria’s apartment here is GORGEOUS! Each room has its own balcony, with high ceilings and tile everywhere. There are separate elevators and entrances for beach trips, with faucets to wash off feet and chairs, so that the building is kept free of sand, compared to most hotels and apartment homes. Because furnishings in Brasil are so expensive, Vitoria has had almost everything shipped here in containers from the U.S.

Breakfast at Vitoria’s apartment was fresh fruit, a locally-made cheese, and fruit juices. You wouldn’t believe the fruits here. We had a papaya that was almost 3 feet long! And also “cashew apple” which is the fruit that grows on top of the cashew nut. The nut was still hanging onto the fruit, so I decided to break the cashew out of its rough husk.

It wasn’t working with the knife, so I put it in my mouth to try to crack it. Vitoria gasped and said not to, but I assured her it was fine. A few seconds later, my mouth was BLAZING with pain. I flew to the internet and discovered that the husk around a cashew (and the nut itself) contains URUSHIOL, the compound that causes rashes and irritation in poison ivy. Cashews must be roasted or steamed to remove the urushiol before it can be consumed, and workers in cashew factories often have long-term health problems because of constant exposure to urushiol.

I could just imagine my mouth erupting in oozing rashes for weeks, but I’ve never ever reacted to poison ivy, so I kept my fingers crossed. I also gargled with vodka, since urushiol is alcohol-soluble. In an hour, I was back to normal.

Do not EVER eat a cashew apple. (Actually the fruit is edible *barely*, but the husk covering the cashew at the bottom is very poisonous!)

This morning we went to the beach. Vitoria said the water was very cold, but I didn’t find it to be any colder than the Caribbean…in fact I remember some trips to St. Maarten where the water was much colder than it is here. The sand in Santos is dingy grey, but across the entrance to the bay lies an island, Isla de Santo Amaro, which has many white sand beaches. On this island is the city of Guaruja, which was where Christian’s family has vacationed for generations. When Christian was young they had a house on a rocky point above one of the longest beaches on the island. Christian still remembers walking around the rocky mountain each day with their maid to bring water from a spring.

Gradually, all the homeowners gave in to pressure from developers, and now the hill where they used to live is covered in high-rise condo units. In fact, the entire island is now one of the top vacation spots in all of Brasil and practically every square inch is covered in condos and hotels. As we drove down the main avenue lined with high-rises, Vitoria told me that when SHE was a little girl, nothing on the island was developed at all. It was completely natural. And in the span of her lifetime, it has turned into Vegas!

We had lunch at a seaside restaurant in Guaruja, and Vitoria strongly recommended that I get Moqueca de Peixe, a typical dish from northern Brasil. It was a very hearty, meaty fish (like shark) that was stewed in a cast-iron Dutch oven with tomatoes and coconut milk. The flavor was so delicate, it was delicious. It was served over rice and topped with Farofa, which is an extremely common side dish in Brasil. It’s made from toasted cassava flour, which is a course, grainy flour from the root of the manioc plant…the same root that tapioca comes from. She also recommended that I get Acerola juice to drink. Acerola is a native Brasilian fruit and its flavor was somewhat similar to passion fruit, but a bit less tart. After some more sightseeing around Guaruja, we had some passion fruit ice cream (sugar free!) and then took the ferry back to Santos.

We’re headed to Sao Paolo tomorrow and things will get hectic…but probably less to write about. (Apologies all around for the length of this entry.)